Kimi AI for Beginners
Kimi AI for Beginners
If you’re new to Large Language Models (LLMs) and want a friendly place to start, Kimi—built by Moonshot AI—deserves your attention. It’s free, web-connected, and can read up to 128 000 tokens in one go (about a 300-page book).
Below you’ll find a quick primer plus a side-by-side comparison with the most talked-about alternatives.
Key Highlights
- Zero-cost access: No paywalls or token limits—just sign up and chat.
- Thinking Mode: Optional step-by-step reasoning for complex questions.
- Multimodal: Handles text, images, PDFs, and code in the same thread.
- Real-time web search: Answers can cite pages it just visited.
- Massive context: Keeps track of long conversations or entire documents without losing the thread.
How to Try It Right Now
- Go to kimi.com or download the mobile app (iOS/Android).
- Create a free account with an email or phone number.
- Upload a file (≤100 MB), paste a long article, or just start typing.
- Toggle “Thinking Mode” when you want deeper explanations.
Model Showdown
The table below compares the latest public versions of each model on the dimensions that matter most to beginners and power users alike.
| Kimi K2 / K1.5 | ChatGPT 4 | Claude 3.5 Sonnet | DeepSeek R1 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost to use | Free, unlimited | Freemium (limits on free tier) | Subscription only | Free |
| Context window | 128 000 tokens (K1.5) 200 000 chars (web UI) |
128 000 tokens | ≈200 000 tokens | 128 000 tokens |
| Real-time web | Yes, built-in | Browse mode (paid) | No | Yes |
| Multimodal input | Text + image + PDF + code | Text + image (paid) | Text only | Text + code (limited image) |
| Reasoning style | Chain-of-thought toggle | Standard | Refined text reasoning | Rule-based RL |
| Coding benchmark (SWE-bench) | 71.6 % (K2) | 54.6 % | ≈72.7 % | ≈60 % |
| Math benchmark (MATH-500) | 97.4 % (K2) | 92.4 % | N/A | ≈96 % |
| Mobile app | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| API access | On request | Yes (paid) | Yes (paid) | Yes |
Which One Should You Pick?
- Choose Kimi if you want a no-cost, web-savvy assistant that can read entire books and show its work.
- Choose ChatGPT 4 when you need the richest plugin ecosystem and don’t mind paying for heavy usage.
- Choose Claude 3.5 Sonnet for nuanced writing tasks or when safety and tone matter most.
- Choose DeepSeek R1 for raw coding or math performance and you prefer a purely open-source stack.
Next Steps
Ready to explore? Open Kimi’s chat page, paste a long article or upload a PDF, and ask it to summarize or reason through a problem. You’ll quickly see why many newcomers are making Kimi their default AI assistant.
